Gates Fountation committed to Memphis schools with or without Cash

Work to continue regardless of superintendent

Whether Memphis City Schools Supt. Kriner Cash stays or not, work that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is doing in Memphis will continue, key executives with the organization say.

Vicki Phillips, head of Gates' U.S. education portfolio, said Friday the Gates contracts are not tied specifically to one superintendent.

"As long as the work is going well, driving deep enough and owned by enough people in the community to have staying power, we are committed," she told The Commercial Appeal editorial board last week.

Cash was one of three finalists interviewed for the superintendent's job in Charlotte-Meckenburg (N.C.) Schools last week.

The school board there will meet in closed sessions Wednesday and Thursday to make a decision.

The challenge now is framing how Gates' $90 million effort to improve teacher effectiveness here will extend to cover 5,400 teachers in Shelby County Schools.

Gates is "open" to providing "enough resources and support to keep doing the work" in the consolidated district, Phillips said.

In a March 28 letter to the foundation, SCS officials said they were committed to the same work Memphis is doing, including making better decisions about who gets hired and changing the pay structure to reward teachers who move the needle on student performance.

Jointly, the two districts asked Gates to assess how much additional funding will be required to include Shelby County teachers and to revise timelines in an addendum for the consolidated district.

Gates also has been asked to identify other funding sources, including national sources.

The districts now are using different methods for evaluating teachers. If and how soon they merge to one evaluation system will depend on local decisions, Phillips said.

In the meantime, Gates conducted its biannual assessment of how Memphis City Schools is doing on goals outlined in the foundation's $90 million commitment to improve teacher effectiveness over seven years.

Foundation leaders met in closed-door sessions with MCS administrators and union leaders Friday to discuss achievements this year and what's ahead in the next six months.

"They have just completed 32,000 teacher observations," Josh Edelman, Gates' lead manager in Memphis, said before the sessions began.

"The way they are focusing on human capital and high-potential teachers is a really interesting thing to look at," he said.

Gates is wrapping up its third year of work in Memphis. Thursday, it celebrated the successes with a reception for 450 supporters at The Racquet Club.

Mayor A C Wharton, recounting the "horrible" schools black children in his childhood in West Tennessee attended, said, "We had every excuse to fail."

Then asking teachers in the room to forgive his grammar, he said, "It ain't the buses; it ain't the building; it ain't the bleachers. It's the teachers."

In three years, MCS has defined what makes an effective teacher "and how to measure it," said Cash, who arrived late in the evening from Charlotte.

"Then we had to develop a whole new evaluation system for all our teachers," he said.

Before Gates got involved, Memphis and districts across the state were required to evaluate tenured teachers once every five years.